


In Vino Sodalitas

by SouthernContinentSkies



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Book: Mirror Dance, Gen, In Vino Veritas, Slight Canon Divergence, the Vorkosigans leave a very large gap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:54:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22687318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernContinentSkies/pseuds/SouthernContinentSkies
Summary: With Miles in a missing cryochamber, and Aral in the hospital, Ivan sneaks off to drink himself into oblivion at the Emperor’s Birthday. This time, it’s not Mark who finds him.
Relationships: Gregor Vorbarra & Ivan Vorpatril
Comments: 20
Kudos: 113
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	In Vino Sodalitas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alessandriana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandriana/gifts).



> In addition to being a Chocolate Box 2020 Treat, fill for the In Vino Veritas square on my Round 14 Trope Bingo card.

The air in the garden was cool on Ivan’s face after the crowded ballroom. The Emperor’s Birthday always had slightly too many people, even for the Residence’s expansive public rooms. Everyone and their daughters were there, after all. It was even worse than Winterfair, since all sixty Counts had to be somehow represented. Ivan suppressed a scowl. He was not happy about the Vorkosigan representation in particular, tonight. That ridiculous Jacksonian construct fit very poorly into the vacuum his actual relatives’ absence had created, and the mismatch only highlighted how empty the room had felt without them.

He hadn’t been particularly worried about Miles at first. The hyperactive little bastard had pulled out of worse things before, though not, admittedly, while already incapacitated - Ivan refused to use any other word, not yet. But Uncle Aral in ImpMil, and the tight, unhappy look around Tante Cordelia’s eyes, had unsettled him deeply. He couldn’t think about Admiral Count Vorkosigan dead. The enormity, the impossibility, of the idea all but short-circuited his brain whenever he got close. The idea that Miles might also be lost, at the same time… it hurt to contemplate, and eventually he’d decided to seek out the most traditional Vor method of pain relief. 

Traditionally, once the crowd at these things turned from decorous to debauched, usually after midnight, Ivan abused his friend-of-the-family status to snag a whole bottle of something off the sideboard, the better to avoid the feeding frenzy around the various bars. This time, he’d skipped the wine in favor of brandy, which he’d found in one of the smaller rooms with only a slightly disapproving look from one of Gregor’s armsmen. He’d regret it later, probably, but right now he wanted to get drunk enough to forget pretty much everything, and frankly he doubted wine would be enough.

He wandered along the paths aimlessly, searching for some sufficiently out-of-the-way corner not already occupied by people having much more fun than he was. It was late enough in the evening that this was a more difficult mission than he had anticipated. Eventually, he found himself on the way to the small gazebo at the foot of the garden. He’d scarcely reached it, however, when a figure in black materialized out of the bushes to give him a - not a heart attack, dammit, not tonight, but certainly a start. It was the armsman from earlier. Ivan sighed.

“A message, sir,” the armsman said, before Ivan could open his mouth to make some insincere apology for the brandy. He held out a folded flimsy.

Ivan took it, and opened it one-handed. It wasn’t sealed.

 _Ivan -_ , it read, in a slightly sloppier version of a hand Ivan nonetheless had no trouble recognizing, _If you’re sneaking off to drink anyway, come drink with me instead._

It wasn’t signed, but then it didn’t need to be.

“Alright,” said Ivan, returning the flimsy to the armsman. It wasn’t a request he felt he could decline, though he knew Gregor would hasten to disagree. After thinking about it, he found he didn’t want to anyway. It was at least less pathetic than drinking alone.

The armsan gestured down the other path, and Ivan followed him.

* * *

Gregor turned out to be holed up, not in his rooms, but in a small parlor on the second floor overlooking the gardens. The lights in the room were off, except for a dim lamp in the corner, and the room was illuminated mostly by the glow of the fairy lights and decorations from the terrace below. From his sofa by the window, Gregor could probably see most of what was happening in the gardens, without being observed himself. No wonder the armsman had found him so quickly.

Gregor had his own bottle of wine on the coffee table in front of him, and he didn’t rise when Ivan entered, stepping just away from the door as the armsman closed it immediately behind him. Between this and the lighting, Ivan concluded that Gregor was not really doing any better than Ivan himself. As unsettling as that was, it was preferable to some horribly serious “you’re the next in line who isn’t dying, have some backup security codes” contingency conversation. Ivan was both far too drunk and far too sober for anything of the sort.

In light of Gregor’s obvious mood, Ivan crossed the room without waiting for an invitation. “Happy birthday,” he said drily, sitting down on the sofa next to him. “How are you doing?”

Gregor snorted, still looking out the window. “How are _you_ doing, Ivan?” he said finally, turning to look at Ivan for the first time since he’d entered the room.

Ivan held up the bottle of brandy in response. “Good enough to drink most of this without a glass. Want some? You look like I feel.”

Gregor grimaced, but to Ivan’s surprise he did hold out a hand for it. “I know,” he said, opening the bottle and sniffing at it. “That’s why I came up here in the first place. There’s only so long I can look that glum in public before people start drawing unfortunate conclusions. But as long as I’m hiding up here anyway,” he took a deep swig of the brandy, grimacing again at the burn, “I might as well take the opportunity to get indecorously drunk.”

He handed the bottle back to Ivan, who took it back for his own portion. If Gregor, of all people, was planning to get drunk enough to notice, Ivan did not want to be far behind.

“The thing is,” said Gregor, after they’d both had enough to trick themselves into some small level of relaxation, “the worst part, right now, is the guilt. I ought to feel worse about Miles. I’m worried, certainly, but this isn’t the first time I’ve had to wrap my mind around the possibility that he might be dead. And, it’s terrible to think this way, but at least this time it wouldn’t be my fault.”

Ivan blinked at him. “What was the other time? Pretty much all of his close calls have been something he’s done to himself.”

“Or chance. But I’m talking about his treason charges. The first ones, I mean,” Gregor finished drily.

“That wasn’t your fault either,” Ivan objected. “I mean, I’m still not sure what was going on with the politics there, but he’s the one who recruited a damn mercenary fleet.”

Gregor took the bottle back from Ivan for a large gulp of the brandy, and stared blankly out the window. “I was the one who leaked that report to Vordrozda.”

Ivan stared at him for a long moment. “You’re not drunk enough to be telling me things like that,” he said finally. “And I’m not drunk enough to hear things like that yet, either. There’s still a decent chance I might remember.”

Gregor waved the bottle at him. “Why do you think I took this away from you?” He took another swig.

It was times like this that Gregor had shades of his old self about him, Ivan thought, and not in a good way. Ivan was drunk enough now to admit to himself - though not so drunk as to admit to Gregor, he’d have to be practically unconscious - that this was one of the reasons he avoided his cousin. He wasn’t sure he could manage Gregor in a funk, as different as he was from Miles - but he was absolutely sure he didn’t want to. He could probably stop Gregor if he actually tried to hurt himself in front of Ivan, though he wasn’t at all sure how the armsmen would react to that, but if the Emperor was suicidal, he frankly didn’t want to know. Ivan also didn’t really want to know if the Emperor was just too human to do his job, especially tonight, but the way Gregor had been drinking, they’d crossed that bridge already. He felt like a coward about it, like he was failing one cousin the way he’d never failed the other, but Ivan needed some level of faith in the stability of the Imperium if he was going to be able to get through his day. If Gregor, the keystone at the center of the whole edifice, wasn’t stable, Ivan would much prefer willful blindness to the truth.

But he was here, now, and he might avoid getting into situations with every brain cell he had, but he wouldn’t run away from something he was in already. Maybe that was the Vor in him, or maybe it was the sort of bull-headed stupidity he’d heard Uncle Aral deride in certain members of the General Staff when he thought Ivan couldn’t hear him, or maybe at this point it was just the alcohol. But he wouldn’t run away from Gregor now, not when he was right in front of him and he so clearly needed someone there. Ivan knew Gregor had other friends, of a sort - Count Vorvolk, at least, and probably others in that circle - but for something like this, political and personal and historical sensitivities all rolled up into one big ball of angst, he could really only afford to turn to family.

“When I was younger,” Gregor said quietly, breaking into Ivan’s thoughts, “I thought that the worst thing about that soltoxin attack was that Miles would have made a much better Emperor than me.” He took another pull from the bottle, and sat staring at the ground between his feet. “Frankly, I’m not sure I don’t still think that, sometimes.”

Ivan stared in horror. “Gregor,” he said, narrowly managing not to squeak. “Can I have that bottle back?”

Wordlessly, Gregor passed it to him. Ivan took a very long drink, and a very long breath, in and out, before speaking.

“Right,” he said. “I’m not even going to touch the part where you think you’re bad at your job. I don’t know, I don’t _care_ to know, and you know I’d never say anything to the contrary anyway, so you wouldn’t trust me to deny it. But, look. What I can tell you, what I can _absolutely_ tell you, is that Miles would be worse.”

Gregor huffed quietly, staring out of the window again.

“People want Emperors to be boring, Gregor,” Ivan said, not putting the bottle down. “That’s really all they want. They want to look up and see things just _working_ , and they don’t really care how. If it’s teetering on the edge, and careening from near-crisis to near-crisis, they _don’t want to know._ They don’t want drama. They might want gossip, but only about people who don’t really matter. Do you know how you can tell when people are worried about something, in this city? They _stop_ talking. Because if it’s serious, they don’t want to conjure it, and they certainly don’t want to be involved, even with whispers. I have no idea whether Miles would be a better problem solver or a diplomat than you are, though honestly I’d bet not, but that’s not the point. He’d be more _drama_. Nobody wants that. And nobody needs that, either. Can you imagine him spending all the time you do cooped up in the Residence? He’d go nuts, and the rest of us would pay for it. These past few weeks have probably been the longest he hasn’t been racing around at top speed since they took his damn braces off.” 

He had to stop, then, taking a long pull from the bottle to cover the long-developing sob that suddenly threatened to burst out of him. He wasn’t going to start crying in a Residence parlor, dammit. If only because at this point he wasn’t sure he could stop. He had wanted to be passed out before he got to this point, but talking to Gregor had delayed his planned alcohol intake.

“I thought I could handle Miles,” said Gregor finally. “And I can, if it comes to that, though I certainly don’t want to. But Aral -” His voice broke. Ivan looked away, though whether to spare Gregor or himself, he wasn’t sure.

“I can’t handle Aral,” Gregor continued in a whisper, as though he were afraid to even say it. “I can’t handle the thought of him - not _now_ , for god’s sake. I love Miles like a brother, but he’s gone half the time anyway, and Aral is _here_ , and I _need_ him here, and if I can’t even send him a message… I’ve leaned on him for so long, and I used to hate it, but now - if he just _disappears_ , this suddenly, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“You can lean on me,” Ivan said quietly. “Not politically or anything, obviously, but I’ll be here.”

Gregor looked at him. He wasn’t crying, but it was close. “You don’t want me to.”

“I don’t want you to have to,” said Ivan honestly. “But you _can_. Especially literally; that certainly doesn’t cost me anything, and if I let you fall over when I’m right here, your armsmen will glare at me.”

“No, they won’t,” said Gregor. “They’re professional.”

But he was beginning to slur just a bit, and he did scoot close enough to put his head back on Ivan’s shoulder. Ivan sat back against the sofa to brace himself, and put his arm around Gregor’s chest in what he hoped was a comforting manner. They lapsed into silence.

“Simon’ll find him, Ivan,” Gregor said eventually. “They’re looking everywhere. If he’s there to find, we’ll find him.”

“Yeah,” said Ivan, raising the bottle again, and swallowing back his despair along with the brandy. “Yeah, _if_.”

They sat there until the bottle was empty, leaning on each other in the dark, with the score of Vorbarra armsmen and all of Imperial Security somewhere outside, keeping watch. It wasn’t enough, on any level - but it was some small comfort to both of them, to know that someone else was thinking all the things they dared not say.

**Author's Note:**

> “In Wine, Friendship/Companionship.” I relied on Google Translate, so please comment or @ me if this is too horrible a translation.


End file.
